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Promoting Information Literacy

Join Us in Promoting Information Literacy Practice Year Round!

Support Information Literacy Year-Round!

The National Forum on Information Literacy and Credo Reference/Libraries Thriving want to encourage every educational, business, national, community based, and governmental organization to actively support information literacy practice year-round. Information literacy is not digital literacy. Physical access to information has never been easier thanks to digital technologies. However, intellectual access can be denied to any learner and/or worker who does not possess the 21st century competencies of basic literacy, information, literacy, and digital literacy.

In today’s universe, social media rules the information airways and we are all consumed and/or overwhelmed by the daily torrents of information coming at us from all directions. In ancient times, during the 20th century, consumers relied primarily on newspapers, TV, magazines, and/or radio for their news and information updates. All you really needed was a mastery of basic literacy in order to benefit from having access to information resources such as newspapers and television.

And then, along came the Internet and the World Wide Web, bringing with it a dynamic, societal paradigm shift, impacting not only how we teach and learn, but also how we work, play, and even vote! The rapid integration of information and communication technologies throughout every fabric of American life called for a new skill set, one capable of empowering learners and workers to become masterful information literacy practitioners in a 21st century information society, dominated by what else – information.

Having every American develop the skills to find, evaluate, and use information effectively, in addition to discerning what is and what is not credible and authentic, has become more important now than at any other time in our nation’s history. And that’s our mission – mainstreaming information literacy practice.

Least we not forget, “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” (President James Madison, 1822)